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Conducting market research regularly is imperative for every small business to keep up with the moving market trends and to ensure that the business maintains its competitive advantage.

Whether you are starting up a new business or expanding an already existing one, conducting market research is very important to understand your target market as well as for increasing your sales.

5 PERFECT METHODS FOR MARKET RESEARCH. Source: Eminenture

Here are eight reasons why you should conduct your own market research

To identify potential new customers

A good market research can clear uncertainties on potential new customer identification such as ages, gender, location, and LSM.

To understand your existing customers

An advanced market research can offer a significant depth of requirements by customers. It can help answer questions such as: Why do your customers choose your products or services instead of your competitors? What makes your products or services special or stand out? Who or what influences what they buy? What do your customers or services enjoy doing, watching, and reading? After all that has been figured out, much more developed and customized products or services can be shaped for their target customers.

To set achievable targets for your business

With the information you have gathered you will be able to set achievable and realistic goals for vital business areas like growth, sales and also when it comes to introducing new products and services to your customers.

To give you a competitive advantage over your competitors

This gives you a significant competitive advantage because you now know what you didn’t know before, and your competitors remain in the dark. Market research can also be used to get information about your competitors where you can identify their strengths and weaknesses and gain clues about their future strategies. This will keep you steps ahead of the competition.

To develop new, effective strategies

Based on the results from your market research you can make informed marketing decisions regarding the pricing of your products and services, the distribution, which marketing strategies and channels to use or if you should develop a new product or introduce a new service.

Did you know that SHAPE Café offers financial management and marketing strategies to young entrepreneurs owning small to medium businesses? Yes, we do! Contact us now and let us help you.

Sleep is integral to enjoying healthiness. Of course eating a healthy, varied diet filled with numerous fresh fruits and veggies conjointly helps. However obtaining a decent night’s sleep, I think, magnifies each alternative effort towards living the most effective life possible. However, it will typically be difficult to get a decent night’s sleep for no matter reason.

Raise your hand if you have been stressed concerning something at work or family troubles and it’s kept you up at night? (I kind of suppose that is unanimous!) There are undoubtedly steps to find out the way to sleep well naturally and I am excited to share what I’ve learned below. (Plus there is a delicious inexperienced smoothie that is good for a pre-bed snack!)

Experts all across the board advice that we want to limit screen time before bed. The advice is a minimum of 60 minutes before bed, however, I even have found that if I place my phone away and step far away from my PC (late work nights) and give myself some break to unwind before bed, my sleep is infinitely higher. The reason why is that, our screens emit light that messes with our internal clocks. Your phone might have a setting that switches to a hotter, more orange light-weight from the blue light; however, it’s still not enough. Screens mean stimulation which means that it’s tougher to turn your brain off if you have been viewing a screen before turning into bed.
Also, falling asleep to the TV? Yeah, quit that habit too! There are other ways in which you’ll be able to unwind that may assist you to slumber additional peacefully.

How To Naturally Sleep Well At Night

We know habits are hard to stop. Begin with one to two minor changes and see what works best. You do not have to do all of these things.

• Find out exactly how much sleep your body actually needs.
• Limit or completely avoid caffeine from 3:00 pm onward.
• Avoid heavy meals before bed or sugary foods because they provide too much energy. That’s where that green smoothie comes in handy. (More on that in a second!)
• Turn off all your screens.
• Limit noise to construct a calm environment.
• Take a warm bath or shower before bed.
• Have some chamomile tea.

WHAT’S IN A GREEN SMOOTHIE?

SHAPE Cafe green smoothie

We have created a green smoothie specifically to help you with falling asleep. A simple combination of fresh leafy greens, cucumber, lettuce, green apple is all we put in our delicious green smoothie, come through to SHAPE Café for a glass!

That is the simplest differentiation between the two types of beverages of which they both come from the same sources which is the coffee bean!

The big difference between espresso and coffee is (1) how it is served and (2) how it is prepared.

Let us first preface this by saying that while you can make espresso without a dedicated machine, in this instance we are referring to espresso via a traditional coffee machine.

There are other methods to make espresso but using an espresso machine is the most mutual variant of the beverage we all know and enjoy.

SHAPE Café located inside Sebokeng Slater at Thabong Shopping Centre is the best coffee shop in Gauteng that serve the best espresso and coffee, pop in and get yourself a cup!

Now that we have established that espresso is coffee but not at all coffee is espresso we can briefly explore the two.

ESPRESSO

An espresso is a concerted, frequently thick coffee drink with a layer of condensed foam whose ingredients are solely coffee and water, created with a machine that forces hot water through a basket of tightly packed, finely-ground coffee for a limited amount of time at very high pressure.

COFFEE

When you are making drip coffee, you have a few choices for brewing. Since the grounds are mixing with water for a longer amount of time, the grind can be rougher than that of espresso. To make the coffee, you can use the pour-over or drip method of brewing, or the absorption route, like with a French press. Either way, the coffee you get from these means will generally have a milder flavor than a shot of espresso, and there won’t be any crema.

Now the variance espresso and coffee has everything to do with the way it is made. These ways of preparation are what dictates the flavor more so than the beans, although using the correct style of beans can make the difference between an OK cup and something extraordinary, and at SHAPE Café we know exactly which beans to use to prepare that extraordinary cup of coffee for you!